'Anywhere on Earth'

In November 1938, Dr Ernst Neustadt, a philologist from Berlin wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, pleading for the help of the Christian leader:

"I should be very glad if you could possibly help me in finding a position at a secondary school, a college, a training college, a University - anywhere on earth - where I could teach my subjects [...] our situation in this country grows more threatening from day to day"

Ernst wrote to many people from 1938 onwards attempting to facilitate his and his wife's escape from Nazi Germany when their situation became untenable. The journey of a refugee however is often overly simplified - the distinction between the heimat and host nation and the distinction between danger and safety being all too common. Often this is not true - with many individuals defying these base categories. The story of Ernst Neustadt is complicated and often messy, moving over different geographies and in the context of different nation states and regimes. As historians such as Tim Cole continue to use GIS to map various elements of the Holocaust - perhaps similar software can be used to identify German-Jewish refugees as equally transnational.

In their introduction to Three Way Street, Jay Howard Geller and Leslie Morris write how the history of German-Jews is perhaps better described as a 'constellation of ties' to reflect the fact that their lives and social interactions often transcended the concept of a nation. Ernst Neustadt, a school headmaster with friends in high places, was born in Berlin, moved to Frankfurt, fled to Scotland, was interned in Surrey and then Douglas (IoM) before moving to London and finally ending his life in Wakefield. Although by no means complete, by displaying Ernst's story through a series of images, documents and maps, a fuller picture of his life begins to emerge - and certainly a confident step towards integrating notions of the transnational into individual narratives.

Over ten years after marrying, Ernst and Gertrud made the move to Frankfurt to allow Ernst to take up the post of Headmaster at Goethe-Gymnasium. In his opening speech to the school, Ernst spoke of the importance of humanism and quoted Nietzsche on the ‘physical and spiritual development to clear and self-assured humanity’ extolling the virtues of the ancient Greeks on his faculty.

However, only five years after taking up the position at Goethe, Ernst was removed from his position and was forced to take a lower paid, lower responsibility job at the nearby Lessing Gymnasium. Despite having published numerous books and journal articles, Ernst's Jewish heritage meant he was eventually forcibly pensioned under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. With a menial source of income it is likely that Ernst and Gertrud would've found it difficult to emigrate, but by November 1938 Ernst was writing to everyone he could think of to help him and his wife escape.

On 30th November 1938, a few weeks after Kristallnacht, Leonard Elmhirst, a noted agrarian from Devon, England, received a letter from Dr Wolfgang von Tirpitz regarding his friend - Ernst. Within the letter, Wolfgang noted that Ernst had ‘none of the disagreeable qualities of his race’ and was ‘after all a good Christian’.

In December that same year, having not heard from Elmhirst, Neustadt wrote a letter to Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury hoping to gain refuge on account of his Christian faith stating:

‘I nor my wife [Gertrud Stadthagen] have any relations abroad so as to be able to provide us with an affidavit for America or Australia, there is a danger that we can’t leave this country [...] As our situation in this country grows more threatening from day to day, help must arrive soon, otherwise it arrives too late…’

In addition to this, in January 1939 Neustadt sent the same letter to Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, and his wife Mary, and to Walter Adams whose address he had been given by Leonard Elmhirst. He was desperate.

On receipt of Ernst's letters, both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Gilbert Murray forwarded it to Esther Simpson of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). In the eyes of the SPSL however, Ernst didn't ‘count as an academic’, only a school teacher and passed his enquiry to Dr Fritz Demuth of the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland, which was also unsuccessful.

From January to July 1939 we lose record of Ernst's attempts to emigrate and learn that despite his various attempts to flee, his eventual escape was supported by Kurt Hahn, his childhood friend, who appealed to the Home Office for a visa to work at Gordonstoun School in Scotland.

For almost 11 months, Ernst lived and worked at Gordonstoun School in Scotland alongside many other staff and students exiled by the Nazi regime. For the locals however, many began to feel unnerved at a large amount of 'aliens' on their doorstep, with some writing to the Secretary of State expressing their concern:

'The fact that these enemy aliens are still in our midst is calling for a good deal of public comment. After all, their true natural allegiance is to their ‘Vaterland’. It is the general opinion of the community here that if these German aliens were interned there would be a greater degree of security'

Although initially exempt from internment and not considered a threat - Ernst, along with all male aliens of working age were arrested in May 1940 as the threat of enemy invasion increased. In total, twenty-one members of staff and students at Gordonstoun School were arrested and transported to Lingfield Park in Surrey - a temporary holding site for interned aliens. By the start of June, Ernst would have arrived at the seaside town of Douglas on the Isle of Man and was interned in Central Promenade Camp alongside other academics, artists and musicians such as Hans Gal. Also in Central Camp, a young Martin Ostwald recalled meeting Ernst in the summer of 1940:

We did have a lively intellectual life with many interesting people in the camp giving lectures. Professor Ernst Neustadt, who had been teaching at a Gymnasium in Berlin, had brought with him a volume of Greek lyric poetry, and a small circle of us enjoyed it and his commentary on the poems

Holding roughly two thousand 'aliens', Central Camp was one of the largest and equally most despondent internment sites due to its cramped conditions. Indeed, Dr George Bell, Bishop of Chichester who visited the camp in August, commented on the 'unforgettable depressing picture, seeing men of high quality wandering aimlessly about behind high palisades of barbed wire'. In August 1940 the first internees were released when the Government White Paper was published; Ernst was released under Category 18: 'Special Cases of Extreme Hardship' most commonly reserved for those refugees whose children or spouse were gravely ill. Posterity tells us that Ernst's wife Gertrud died of cancer in March 1942, and it is highly likely Ernst was released for this reason.

From letters addressed to Ernst in the first half of 1941 we know he was living at 53 Belsize Park Gardens. From the beginning of the war - Belsize Park became a focal point for Jewish refugees in London affiliated with the New Liberal Jewish movement chaired by Lily Montagu.

With no job, a sick wife, and living in a bedsit in London, Ernst wrote to his mother-in-law Clara Stadthagen (nee Schneider) who he had been regularly sending money to, to inform her that his financial situation was too dire to send anymore money. Clara, with no means to support herself, died destitute in Berlin in October 1941 as the deportations to the east began. In the search for work Ernst contacted many organisations such as The Mayor of Guildford's Fund for German Refugees and the Society of Friends both of whom sent his requests back to the SPSL. The SPSL referred Ernst to the Joint Scholastic Agency who presumably facilitated his appointment to Wakefield Grammar School in September 1941.

Although listed as a 'Temporary War Appointment' at WGS, due to his qualifications and demonstrable experience Ernst was paid higher than some of his fellow refugee colleagues such as Dr Gunter Herman Archenhold, the former director of the Archenhold Observatory. For Ernst this money was a lifeline.

On their move to Wakefield, Ernst and Gertrud moved in with another refugee couple - Dr Oscar and Dr Irene Turgel after their previous landlady 'wanted them gone'. The Turgels, both medical practitioners, owned a large house at the end of Belgrave Terrace, Wakefield and regularly went away on business and conference trips. In March 1942, Gertrud finally passed away at the age of fifty two and was buried at St Helen's Church in Sandal Magna on 1st April. Ernst was evidently devastated. Having previously been a respected academic and headmaster, Ernst resented his situation and was described in one recollection of the school as a 'very unhappy man, very much feared and hated by the boys'.

On Saturday 25th April 1942 whilst Irene and Oscar Turgel were away in Leeds, Ernst committed suicide in the bathroom of 4 Belgrave Terrace. The week previous, Ernst's employment at Wakefield Grammar School was terminated and whilst the governors were keen to highlight there was no 'irregularity' in Ernst's conduct it cannot be denied that the man who in 1938 was described as 'progressive' and of 'pure and clear character' was gone by the start of 1942.

Despite 'escaping' Nazism in the summer of 1939 - Ernst's life became no easier. As a man of exceptionally high attainments in the position of a school teacher, Ernst arguably fell through the gap, over-qualified for school and missing the experience of a University lecturer. Often relying on the generosity of his friends and colleagues Ernst's life became increasingly difficult from the summer of 1940. Having traversed the continent and the British Isles, Ernst's journey finally came to an end in Wakefield, nearly 1200km from his birthplace in Berlin, and with no children or traceable nieces or nephews his legacy remains in his published work and in the fascination of researchers.